Title: Bait and Switch

Prompt: Thor's enemies torture Loki to hurt Thor.

Warnings: Blood, graphic violence, torture, extreme Loki whump, gratuitous H/C.

They want him to kill his father.

They want him to betray his country and his people, and this he will not do. They want his word - his sworn word, magically binding before the Norns themselves - that he will swear fealty to them and their cause and obey their commands, and only then will they release him from this durance. But this he will not do. They may beat him, with iron bars when their own strength does not suffice; they may apply hot iron brands but he will only let the blood-fury scorch in his veins and burn away pain, and laugh in their faces with the howl of the bersekrgang. They will not break him, they cannot break him.

But they will try. He is bound to a chair in a dull, low-ceiling stone room, the lower parts of some crude keep in the deep woods. It is hard to focus on anything, even if he wished to; his head swims with too many cracks, and one eye is blurred and stained with blood. Just enough light filters in to let him take in the rest of the decorations in this room: racks and tables, crude instruments of saws and picks and tongs hung from the walls. No doubt they put them here in full view in order to sap his spirit.

He doesn't even know for certain who they are. He would have taken them for a rag-tag motley of bandits scratching out a living on the fringes of society, except for their leaders. They are a brother and sister pair, true partners in crime, and they claim to have their lineage descend from King Njord himself, before his fall. Thor can believe it; they have the fair beauty about them of the Vanir nobility, or at least what would be beauty before they had given themselves so wholly to depravity.

Thor and his companions had been on Vanaheim for three days on this ill-fated hunting trip, stopping only briefly in the governor's palace before heading into the deep woods in search of stag. It is true that they had been careless, riding laughing and merry through the woods with no regard to who might hear them - but Vanaheim has been an ally to Asgard for centuries, tamed and civilized under the Asgardian mantle. Vanaheim is supposed to be safe.

He wonders where the others are now. His brother and Lady Sif, Volstagg, Hogun and Fandral. He hopes they are safe. When the night attack came upon their encampment they targeted him, only, (and now he knows why;) he hopes that the others escaped, and are carrying word back to Asgard even now. Although if this band of degraded rebels could hide from Heimdall's sight for so long, they could search for him fruitlessly for days and not find him - weeks, months -

His useless circling thoughts are broken by footsteps, the sound of many boots scuffling over the stone. He tenses as they come nearer, torchlight entering the chamber ahead of the bodies that fill it, although he cannot turn to see them.

"Have you given any more thought to our proposal, Thunderer?" a voice calls out from behind him.

Thor tenses up as he recognizes the voice, his muscles clenching in anticipation despite the sweet clear tones. A woman steps around into his vision, pale in an undyed woolen gown and with ash-colored hair in a rough braid down her back. She is smiling, pale lips drawn back in a pleasant expression, but there is a light in her eyes like glimmering gas-light in the marshes: poisonous and cold, promising not warmth but suffering and death.

It is difficult to speak around the hoarseness in his throat, his teeth loose in swollen gums and his tongue thick and dry. His voice when it comes out at all sounds like he has a mouthful of gravel. "Rot in Hel," he snarls, keeping his eyes fixed on her as the rest of their ruinous band fills the chamber.

All of the bandits wear ragged hunting outfits of leather and fur, poorly cured and smelling of rot. Their leader alone wears the skin of a wolf up over his head like a hood, the ferocious wolf-muzzle crowning his head with wisps of muddy blond hair escaping the edges of the cowl. His sister wears a long plain dress of undyed wool, with only a belt of sable fur adorning it; and yet, she needs no more grim adornments than the faint glint of madness in her eyes.

"Truly, it was the fates that brought you to us," the wolf-crowned man intones. "The Norns meant for you to fall into our hands - through you we can strike at the usurper, Odin Oathbreaker, and restore the true king."

"My father is the king," Thor mumbles.

His handsome face face twists with rage. "Your father is a murderer, a thief and a tyrant!" he snarls.

"He and that puppet that he installed down in the palace are nothing but intruders on this world," his sister agrees, leaning briefly against her brother's side. :"The throne of Vanaheim belongs to the house of Njord, and the sorcerer-king has no right to it!"

"Queen Frigga..." Thor wheezes. "Daughter of Njord... gives him that right."

"That traitorous witch! She lost all right to claim the blood of Njord when she opened her legs for the invader," she says, lips working as though with the taste of rancid milk. "If she was so eager to lie down in bed with the tyrant, then she can be burned in the bed with him!"

Thor bares his teeth, tasting the blood that coats them like a savage animal. If this is meant to convince him to help their cause, heaping grievous insults and hideous threats on his mother is really not helping.

The snarl on her face smoothes away, turning back into a beatific smile as she steps back. "But I have given up trying to speak reason to you," she says. "Instead, I have something else that I think may convince you."

Thor watches warily as she turns her back to him and walks away. Of the pair of them, he fears the sister more than the brother. They are both evil, but there is a savage kind of malice in her that her brother does not possess. His ideas of torture are simple, straightforward - beatings, bruises and blood. These Thor could endure and endure. But there is something dark and twisted in the woman, which looks on his bound form with a cruel delight, that sends cold crawling fingers up his spine.

Women make the best torturers, he remembers hearing his war-tutor once say, because they are naturally more empathetic. At the time he'd scoffed at that seeming contradiction; now, he thinks, he understands. To have sympathy with your victim doesn't make you any less effective as a torturer - no, it only helps you know what hurts the most.

"You are strong, Thunderer," she says now as she walks towards the row of instruments hung on the wall, perusing them slowly. She selects one and turns back, smiling as she holds the bone-saw in both hands out towards him. "You have always been the strongest, the mightiest in battle, cleaving tens of foes at once with a swing of your weapon-arm. Strong as a mountain, sinews like trees. What a very interesting metaphor, I always thought."

She lays the edge of the saw against his wrist, right above the shackle, and draws it across his skin with a sharp scrape. It digs less than an inch into his skin and the fat beneath it, and blood wells up out of the cut to spill down over the arm of the chair. Pain shoots up his arm in spurts and spasms, and he shudders as the saw scrapes over the thick tendons of his wrist. The blades of the saw are not sharp. "So I wonder how long it would take to cut through the flesh and bone with this saw," she says, cool and soft. "Can you picture it, Odinson? I do. Your screams in the air, the blood spurting from the stump -"

It's hard, but he manages to summon a laugh, hearty and full of disgust. "You will not," he snarls. "You wouldn't dare, because you still want me to fight for you, and you won't do anything that would keep me from fighting."

She hisses in fury and digs the saw deeper; he winces and snarls but does not flinch away, summoning the blood-fury to fuel the flames of his righteous anger. It sings in his blood with the familiar beat of battle and the pain is not, after all, so bad.

"Rathveig, he's no use to us crippled," the brother calls out warningly, and the sister scowls more in response, but then reluctantly lets up the pressure on the saw. Thor can't help a small, but savage grin of triumph: they may have him, bound and in their power, but in this way he still has some power over them. They do not dare damage him too much, for fear of losing his utility; and anything else, he can endure.

"You're a fool, Odinson," she snaps, flinging the saw aside as she turns away. "Spoiled princeling, what do you know of suffering? You don't even know enough to fear your own death, your own pain!"

She pauses, then smiles slowly, nastily, the glint becoming more pronounced in her eyes. "But maybe, then, you'll learn to fear someone else's."

At her sharp gesture, one of the rough-clad bandits vanishes out into the stone corridor. Echoes of footsteps and voices rang through the doorway, including one - faint, muffled, and almost indistinguishable - that was so familiar as to grip his stomach in sudden foreboding.

The brother leans back against the stone wall and folds his arms, smirking nastily. "If we needed any more proof that the Norns were on our side, we have it," he says. "We were blessed enough with luck to capture one Asgardian prince - fortune favors us with another one, as well!"

Thor opens his mouth to deny it, to curse it for a lie - but the bandits return in the next moment, two of them dragging a slim, dark figure between them.

Loki is wearing the same hunting clothes Thor saw him in last, now torn and stained. There is no sign of his weapons, his bow or his daggers, and his boots are gone. His stocking feet slip over the stone as he's dragged forward into Thor's line of vision; his skin is pale and lined with sweat, and reddening bruises cover half of his face. His black hair, normally so sleek and tidy, is all in a mess, hanging in tangles and strands about his face and neck.

Thor sits bolt upright, straining against the restraints that bind him to the chair. "Loki?!" he chokes in horror. Loki makes a muffled, urgent sound in reply; he is gagged, dirty cloth wadded into his mouth and bound there with a leather belt, and both of his hands are completely swathed in bindings and constrained by the guards on either side of him. It's clear they already know his brother is a mage, and also know that even the most powerful of mages needs his hands free to cast.

The sister reaches over and casually yanks the gag from around Loki's head; he coughs and gags, spitting out the wads of cloth. One of his guards leans nervously away from his prisoner, eyeing him nervously. "Your highness, are you sure that's wise?" he asks.

She smirks weirdly, her eyes glinting in that hungry way again. "Oh, yes," she says softly. "His brother should be able to hear him."

"What are you doing here?" Thor demands as soon as Loki's mouth is clear.

"What does it look like, fool?" Loki snaps back. He's pale and sweating under the mask of bruises. "Trying to save your foolish hide!"

"By risking your own? You should be safely back in Asgard by now!" He burns madly to ask Loki what has become of his companions, if they were also captured or escaped to mount some further rescue; but he dares not, for knowing so would give away their friends to these madmen.

"Don't be stupid! You know we couldn't just leave you!" Loki returns heatedly.

"Isn't it touching, Kreppvor?" the sister interrupts, "How devoted the brothers are to one another. Such love between siblings is all too rare in these days, is it not?"

The brother - Kreppvor - lets out an evil chuckle. Thor's mouth snaps shut, and he gives the woman a glare of deepest mistrust. On the other side of the room, he can see Loki doing the same.

She turns towards her henchmen, and with a jerk of her head indicates a sinister metal scaffolding on the far side of the room. "Strip him and strap him in," she says. "And move it over here. I want the Thundrer to have the full view."

Loki bursts into a flurry of curses and struggles as the men come at him to wrestle his clothes off; where the garments catch on straps or boots, the bandits produce small skinning knives and simply cut them away, the fine leather garments reduced to jagged scraps on the dungeon floor. Thor's breath catches as an untimely jerk of Loki's arm drags his skin carelessly against one of the blades; but through a few drops of blood bead up along the scratch, it is not very deep, for they were not truly trying to hurt him. Not yet.

In the end they leave him with a jagged scrap of his trousers, stripped away at the sides to expose the lean pale flanks. It is not only for the purpose of humiliation, Thor realizes; Loki often hides weapons in his clothes, and if there were any on him now they are well out of his reach. The same for any amulets or items of magical power. He might not be fully naked but he is bare of threat, helpless and vulnerable.

It takes four men to haul and shove the jumble of heavy stone and thick metal bars across the floor, and three more to wrestle Loki onto it. Two pull out his arms and hold him spread-eagle against the frame, snapping bulky metal cuffs over his limbs - not only at wrist and ankle but at elbow, knee, and neck, with a wide leather strap crossing his stomach and pulling cruelly tight. It must have been designed for someone larger, because Loki's slight frame is pulled taut to reach each of the bindings, his feet barely brushing against the ground when they step back and leave him.

Rathveig steps up to critically examine their work, her fists planted at her woolen belt as she rakes her eyes over him from head to toe. He glares back at her with full fury, his green eyes promising poison, but that only makes her smile. She reaches out and runs a small white hand over his chest, up one shoulder and over the taut tendon under his arm, then suddenly stops and digs her nails into the skin and muscle until Loki hisses.

This pleases her, and she turns back to Thor with a smirk. "You think yourself strong, Thunderer," she says, "and proud in your strength. But I have learned over the years that a man is only so strong as the weakest thing he loves."

"Don't give them anything, Thor!" Loki calls. His skin is pale, but his jaw is set and his eyes burn with stubbornness. "No matter what they do to me, don't give in!"

"I... I won't," Thor says a little bewildered and unsure. He knows it to be true, that Loki is a prince of Asgard the same as him, with the same duties and the same obligations; it would be a betrayal of both their loyalties for Thor to yield, no matter what the pressure. If Loki is set to endure, then surely Thor can do no less.

Yet a part of Thor is suddenly afraid; for all that Loki has grown into a strong warrior and a mage, there is a corner of Thor's mind where he will always be the dark-haired baby toddling after Thor through their mother's gardens. Loki had tripped and grabbed the hem of Thor's coat when he had fallen, and refused to let go while he wailed his hurt and anger over his bruised knee. Frigga had laughed as she swept them both up and kissed everything better, and Thor had sworn with all the solemnity of the very young that he would always protect his baby brother.

Too late he remembers his captors; the woman is watching their exchange with an intent expression, reminding him of a shark on the hunt for blood in the water. She catches his eye and smiles at him, then deliberately turns her back and walks up to stand before Loki.

"Oh, my pretty, fragile boy," she croons, reaching up to caress his face; he jerks his head to the side, but can't move far enough to escape his touch. "I am going to enjoy taking you apart."

She steps back and with sharp words commands two of her minions forward, gesturing them to take up their places on either side of the strange contraption. One of them has a wicked grin on his face, snickering in cruel anticipation; the other is completely indifferent, eyes blank and uncaring. Of the two of them, Thor is not certain which is worse.

Thor eyes it warily, certain it is built for some nefarious purpose but still not certain what. It is huge and heavy, solid slabs of stone bracing thick metal bars, and with a blurred blink Thor thinks it might have once been the remains of a ruined siege weapon - a ballistae. It has the approximate shape of a huge crossbow, long curved metal arms that are meant to be wound back tight against a solid shaft. With massive pullers that could be wound either by a pair of oxen or a team of men, it could launch huge bolts thousands of yards through the air, to shatter wood or stone where it landed.

There is no bolt in it now, and whatever its original purpose it has been disassembled and defiled. Only the curving metal arms remain, and Loki's wrists are chained tightly to each of them; as the bandits wind the pulleys to crank back the lath, his arms are twisted back and up, tighter and tighter.

Already sweat is standing out on his forehead from the pressure, and he pushes himself up a few futile inches on tiptoes in an attempt to relieve the strain on his shoulders. He can't get far; the straps on his legs and waist hold him firmly down, anchoring his lower body against the stretch. "Loki," Thor calls out, suddenly afraid.

"Don't worry about me! I'll be all right," Loki gasps out, but the whites are showing around his eyes and his voice has gone breathless and thready. "Whatever happens - you can't give in to them -"

His words are cut off in a breathless keen as the pulley ratchets further, jerking him up against the limits of his bonds; the muscles of his chest and shoulders bunch desperately, trying to counter the force of the pull, but even the strength of a god is no match for the mighty siege machines. His eyes squeeze shut, lips drawn back over a grimace of pain - and then a sudden cracking pop sounds through the room, loud enough to almost cover his breathless cry.

Thor knows that noise, knows it too well from battlefields and, worse yet, from the skinning and quartering of game on the hunt; it is the sound of tendons beginning to give way. "Enough of this!" Thor exclaims, his hands jerking futilely against his own restraints. "This is without honor - without purpose - he's not even the one you want, it's me you want, it's me you should -"

Rathveig raises a hand in halt, and for a moment Thor's heart leaps in hope; he hovers, breathless, as she studies Loki long and wordlessly. His skin has gone ashen-pale, cheekbones standing stark against his face from the stress, and wheezing little grunts escape him as he struggles to readjust against the inexorable pressure, struggles to draw breath.

Then she turns back to her minions and nods to one of them. "Just the right side now, I think," she purrs.

"Stop it!" Thor shouts, exploding into a frenzy of motion as the grinning minion throws his weight back onto the crank, ratcheting the metal bar back and back again. Loki's body jerks and a scream escapes his lips, convulsions racing through his body as his frame is twisted and pulled. "Leave him alone! Leave him alone! I swear, I swear, I swear -"

But neither Thor's voice nor Loki's screams can drown out the sound, the horrible liquid cracking noise as bone and cartilage give way. Before Thor's horrified eyes, the overstretched joint of Loki's shoulder suddenly warps, collapsing in a hollow in one place and bulging horribly against the skin in another. His arm extends horribly, unnaturally, a sudden slack that is immediately taken up by the winding winch, twisting and pulling his arm far out of place behind him.

Loki screams, a piercing shriek that threatens to shatter Thor's eardrums, and he roars wordlessly and mindlessly in an attempt to drown it out. I swear, I swear by Yggdrasil itself that I will kill you, I will kill you, I will -

His eyes are squeezed shut, red blackness behind them as his unspoken vow pulses in his ears, in his eyes, with every beat of his heart. I will kill you, kill you, kill you.

"What's the matter, Thunderer?" Her voice cuts him like a whip, dripping with scorn. "Is your stomach too delicate to look on your own brother? There is your brother, trapped in pain beyond bearing, and you don't even have the courage to bear the sight of it! "

Her malice bites him deeply, and Thor opens his eyes despite himself, wet with tears. Loki hangs writhing on the rack, half-torn, and even though the winches have halted, it is clear that this is no reprieve. He doesn't ever really stop screaming, only gasping in half-breaths with what is left of his air, then letting them out in agonized moeans. "What are you doing to him?" Thor demands, voice blurring with sobs he can't let go.

"I? I'm doing nothing to him," she laughs viciously. "He's doing it to himself."

"What are you talking about?" Thor demands. Kill you, kill you, kill you, his blood pulses with each vow.

Rathveig prowls again in a circle around Loki, reaching out and touching his flesh with false gentleness. Loki jerks back from each prod as though it were a heated iron brand, struggling with the stifled breath in his lungs to scream and scream again.

"You Aesir heal quickly," Rathveig croons. "There is a great magic in your flesh that knits it back together, healing injuries almost as fast as they appear. But oh, look at this - the princeling's bone is out of joint. His magic struggles to make it right, to pull it back together so it can heal, but it can't. The struggle between the pull of the rack and the pull of the healing magic - it must feel like every instant his arm is being torn back out again. It's a shame, isn't it, that he can't just turn it off?"

Thor surges forward in his bonds, lifting the chair he is bound to a bare inch off the floor before it slams back down again. "Let him go!" he rages, furious and helpless. "Let him go! He can't give you what you want!"

"No, he can't," Rathveig replies, and her voice is sweet calmness slathered over sickly glee. "The second Odinson is no use to us at all - and do you understand what that means? We can rip him apart, limb from limb, one at a time - we can, and we will."

Her prowling circuit brings her to the arm of Thor's chair, and she presses close against his side. The cold point of a knife presses under his chin, forcing his head up, forcing him to look unwillingly upon his brother's torment.

"Have you ever torn the wings off a chicken, Odinson?" she hisses in his ear, following it up with another little pointed jab. "A knife is no use, because the bone of the joint is too strong - so you twist until the joint comes loose from the socket. And then you twist some more, because the joint is loose but the flesh and skin are still holding it together, much weaker now, but stretchy and loose. You turn it around and around, again and again, until the tendons give way and the muscle shreds apart and the whole limb comes apart in your hands -"

"Stop this!" Thor roars, and he can't see Loki any more because the tears are streaming from his eyes, but it doesn't help because he can still see the vision the witch painted in his mind, replaying over and over in an endless gory instant.

Rathveig lets up the pressure, leaning away from his chair. "He has four limbs, Thunderer," she purrs. "With magic that strong, I do believe he would survive all of them. The choice is yours."

"Th -" Loki is struggling for breath, twitching agonizingly in the snare. All his silvered tongue is wasted now, reduced to garbled incoherence. "Don - uh. Nn... no... nuh... n-no..."

Thor lowers his head, weeping freely now. The witch is right, and he knows it. He's not strong enough, not for this. Hatred seethes within him like molten lead, blackening and scalding, but it is only pain, not strength. There is no other choice.

"I yield," he says lowly, and hunches down at the inarticulate cry of protest that comes from his brother. He raises his voice over it. "I yield! I will do what you say."

Rathveig pounces, the flames in her eyes dancing high with triumph. "Swear it," she hisses. "Swear on your name that you will serve our cause!"

"I swear," and Thor has to swallow, has to cough and raise his chin before he can speak. "I swear that if you let my brother go -"

"No conditions," Kreppvor cuts in, harsh and warning. "You're in no position to dictate terms, Odinson. You fight for us, and we keep the brother as a guarantee."

Thor grinds his jaw till his teeth threaten to crack but the swine is right; he has nothing to bargain with. "I, Thor son of Odin, do swear on my name to obey every command that you give me, Rathveig, daughter of Njord," he grits out.

As soon as the words leave his mouth he can feel them take; there is old magic in an oath taken by name, one that cannot be broken. The siblings feel it as well - they are gods too, after all, no matter how far they have fallen. Kreppvor smiles, and Rathveig laughs out loud, very nearly clapping her hands with giddiness like a young girl. Loki must feel it as well, agonized as he is; he lets out a defeated moan. "Now blast you and boil you in Muspelheim's fires, let my brother down!" Thor roars.

At a wave from the witch, the torturers step forward and take up the levers again; the pulleys creak and clank, and Loki screams again, dwindling fast into a gasping moan. He hears a grinding pop as the joint is restored to its proper place, almost as sickening as when it first came loose, but Thor refuses to look. He does not want to see the expression on Loki's face, does not want to know what would be there. Anger, condemnation, for giving in so easily despite all Loki's pleas to the contrary, for selling out their father and their people? Or worse - plain pure gratitude, for that same betrayal?

Another stinking bandit steps forward with a set of clinking keys, and one by one undo the locks holding Thor to his chair. After so long locked in one position, his arms and legs are numb, and barely respond to his attempts to move them. The bandit shoves him sharply from behind, and he falls forward out of the chair, landing on his hands and knees at Rathveig's feet.

She stands over him, burning with triumph, preening with pride and victory to have her hated foe on his knees before her - broken in will as well as in body. Her pearly lips smile, then part as she draws breath. "Now, Odins -" she starts to say.

Thor's arm snaps out before she can finish her sentence, one hand clamping over her throat. The rest of her sentence is lost in a gurgle as he surges forward, no finesse, just overbearing weight and raw furious brute strength.

Rathveig lets out a choked scream as the two of them slam to the stone floor, his hands around her neck. The bandits on every side shout in outrage and consternation and surge forward, brandishing weapons or trying simply to pry him off, but Thor shrugs them off, intent only on murder.

"You dare not!" Kreppvor screams, somewhere beyond the press of bodies. An unforseen boon, that his own men should inadvertently block him from coming to his sister's aid. "You will be oathbreaker, forsworn! You swore on your name!"

"Aye, I swore, to obey every command that she spoke," Thor snarls, keeping his eyes fixed on the witch's face. For certain, there are no commands in the gargling noises that are all that escape her mouth now. "But I swore another oath first, to Yggdrasil: that I would kill whoever dared to treat my kin so. And I mean to keep my oaths, in the order I gave them."

The witch's feet pound against his torso, her nails scratch into his forearm, but it is to no avail; Thor drags her in with inexorable strength, the deadly embrace of the grizzly bear. Fists and weapons beat on him from all sides but Thor can barely feel them, floating above the pain and sensation. His enemy is within his grasp and nothing can stop him now, nothing, nothing, and he grasps the witch's head with one hand and twists with all the frustrated fury and hatred of this night -

There is a ripping, grinding noise and a sudden cessation of resistance; the body in his arms jerks and goes limp, and all noises cease. Thor opens his grip, and a surge of hot liquid splashes his face and chest and throat as Rathveig's body folds to the floor, and her head rolls off in the other direction, trailing the crushed and torn remains of her neck. The eyes are open, wide and glazed with surprise, and the mouth open as though to have one last word.

"Command me now, witch," Thor tells the head savagely, and he spits bile and blood into the mess on the floor.

Then blows rain down on him and pain returns, blossoming in his head, his back and sides as the enraged bandits close on him. The world goes dark and distant as one blow after another cracks down upon his head, and the last thing he sees as his eyes dim is the brother kneeling upon the floor, cradling the headless body of his sister in his arms.

He comes back to himself back in the chair, the leather straps and metal shackles cutting cold into his limbs. Not more than a handful of minutes has passed, he does not think, for the chamber still stinks of fresh blood. He looks up, his eyes blurred and not focusing, to see the wolf-shape looming above him. It blocks out the light, only a few glints playing upon the sharp edges of canine teeth, or upon the cold edge of the iron bar gripped in one hand.

"That," Kreppvor says, icy cold, "was a mistake."

He swings the iron bar around and slams it along the side of Thor's jaw, hard enough to knock it loose and set his head ringing. For a moment Thor is sure that the rebel king will continue, beating Thor's head until it caves in, but then he drops the bar with a ringing clang and turns to stride away.

Loki. Thor's heart seizes with ice, which had been so full till now with molten metal. The accursed with had let up the pressure on the pulleys, but Loki had not been freed; he is still laid out bare on the rack, muscles twitching and flexing as he struggles to breathe. Kreppvor stops in front of him and reaches to his hip, drawing a long, wickedly barbed knife from a sheath at his hip.

"You killed my sibling," Kreppvor tells him savagely. "So now I kill yours. While you watch, and can do nothing. No more bargains, no more oaths - the blood and entrails of the kin of Odin will be all my prize!"

He shifts the dagger to an overhand grip and lifts it high over Loki's exposed chest - then draws it down with one smooth motion over his abdomen, instead. Loki makes a noise that is more gasp than scream, as a wide arc of blood spatters out from his skin to splash on the floor. The bandit has opened a long slash down his stomach, skin and muscle parting to the side, exposing his guts to the light and air.

"You will beg for the end long before it comes," Kreppvor promises grimly, and lowers the knife again. "Both of you."

Thor has no strength left, he just slumps in his bonds and shakes with waves of sick horror. All his might born of fate and fury have fled, and he is powerless to act. He was a fool, he should not have acted so rashly - he should have played along for longer, until he found some clever way to free them both - and now Loki will pay for his stupidity. Loki who is writhing helplessly in his bonds; his head is thrown back, his neck stretched taut and bare, and his face is locked in a rictus grin of agony.

No -

Thor has to look again, and then again to be sure, and even then he cannot understand what he is seeing. Loki is smiling. His shoulders shake and his lips move, not in screams but in silent laughter.

It makes no sense and Thor's eyes slide away from it, skittering away and back from his brother's form. His gaze lands on the spatter of Loki's blood on the stone floor, still steaming in the cold air.

Not steaming. Smoking.

It's hard to tell in the poor light - the stone floor is dark with grime, and the blood dark against it, but it looks like the stain is... spreading over the floor. The patch of darkness grows, and with it the writhing smoke - and then the ground itself begins to quiver, as though the solid stone is only a thin skin over a pot of liquid below. One that is rapidly coming to a boil.

Thor keeps his tongue locked behind his lips, frozen and silent so as not to give any warnings to their captors... who are intent on Loki, paying no mind to the uncanny danger spreading below their feet. They take no notice, even when the stones themselves begin to heave and buckle, then sink abruptly into quicksand. A dark, amorphous form appears in the hole, struggling upwards against the weight of the stones; still smoking, it resolves itself into a misshapen limb which glows sullen orange against cinder-black. The end of the limb flops clumsily against the floor, then using that as a lever the rest of the creature heaves up from under the earth with a blood-curdling roar.

That gets their attention.

But by then it is too late to act; already the floor is sinking and bubbling in more places where drops of Loki's blood spattered. Even as the bandits curse and scream and grab for their weapons, the first of the monsters turns on them with a vile hiss, spreading a wide skeletal mantle like featherless wings as its long sinuous neck darts down to tear at them with needle-sharp fangs.

Screams fill the air as the bandits turn to flee from this sudden threat - or stand their ground, and are struck down. Thor shouts with joy as flesh and armor tears, laughs as bandit blood flows. Kreppvor himself is one of the brave few that stands against the monsters; his dagger strikes the coal-glowing scales and shatters, and the monster he struck at turns on him in a fury and seizes him in its needle-fanged mouth. A second monster, jealous of its brother's fortune in meals, snatches at the flailing legs as they disappear into the ravening maw, and the two of them play a grisly game of tug-of-war with the last of the true kings of Vanaheim.

Thankfully, the infernal monsters seem to be ignoring Thor - and Loki - despite what easy prey they would make, bound and helpless as they are. But the smoke they bring with them fills the close room and chokes out what little fresh air there was, and Thor feels it burning in his eyes and stinging in his wounds. He struggles to stay awake, to work his way free so that they can make their escape... but the smoke fills his lungs and it is so hard, so hard to breathe...

The last thing he sees before his eyes shutter closed is a sudden burst of light, and a rumbling roar of rocks as the ceiling above them gives way.

~to be continued...